5 ms·

The history of barbed wire

73 points by curtis 12y ago

elevensies 12y ago
The conflict between cowboys and farmers is still going strong over 100 years later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff
- agumonkey 12y ago
  A conflict born from such a small technological change. Managing land is tricky.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  I would characterize that more as a freeloader deciding he wasn't being subsidized enough by the taxpayer, then declining to pay the tiny pittance the BLM levies for the privilege of overgrazing the deserts of the West. That he was able to hoodwink a bunch of city slickers eager to signal their "conservatism" by opposing the gub'ment no matter what, says more about them than about him.
- darkarmani 12y ago
  "Bundy has said he does not recognize and will not submit to federal police power over land that he believes belongs to the "sovereign state of Nevada."[28] He said: "I abide by all Nevada state laws. But I don't recognize the United States government as even existing."" That has nothing to do with cowboys and farmers and more to do with a being a massive trespasser and all around freeloader.
jsherry 12y ago
If you have a taste for stories that span the spectrum of airport carpeting fanboys to those with more historical significance such as the story here, I cannot recommend the 99% invisible podcast enough. Web - http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id394775318 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id394775318
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  To list a couple others off the top of my head: SF's public stairways, NYC's cow tunnels, sound design for televised sports, Plimsoll lines, elevator brakes, architecture for deaf people. I don't know if I'd call it a "spectrum" so much as a "crazy pile of everything design related." Great show.
- digitalneal 12y ago
  I was just going to mention this too. One of the best Podcasts out there IMO. Great "short" stories/history lessons.
GuiA 12y ago
This is one of the most interesting parts of the article to me: Right around the same time that barbed wire was invented, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. At first, telephone companies were laying telephone wire in cities, but they weren’t interested in the rural market. But farmers also needed phones, which meant that they needed a network of wires to connect the farms. Barbed wire fences could serve this purpose. The barbed wire couldn’t transmit a signal quite as clearly as a nice insulated copper wire, but for many years, it did the trick. A dozen or so farms might be connected on one system; for about $25, farmers could buy a kit to rig themselves into the network. In 1907 there were 18,000 independent telephone cooperatives serving nearly 1.5 million people. Because of this, farmers were some of the earliest adopters of telephone technology. A great reminder that technological advances don't happen in a vacuum, and new innovations spread best if they can work over already existing infrastructures.
- steverb 12y ago
  Around 1998 I was working for a small mom and pop computer/networking shop and had a customer successfully run Ethernet over barbed wire so he could network between his house (where the main computer was) and his barn. It was about a fifty foot run at 1Mbps. He did have issues when it rained, once the posts got wet enough to ground the wires.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    I knew rain affected wifi cantennas, now it messes with wired networking too.
    - vlunkr 12y ago
      Only if your wires are exposed
  - na85 12y ago
    How on earth did he manage that? Didn't the barbs cause shorts where they touched the individual twisted metal strands?
relaytheurgency 12y ago
Glidden’s design took off, and by 1876, his company was producing nearly 3 million pounds of barbed wire annually. Sentences like this always bother me. Of what use is this information? Barbed wire isn't used as a counterweight. How much fence is 3 million pounds?
- masklinn 12y ago
  Basic barbed wire is ~80 lbs per quarter-mile roll (1,320 ft) according to http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/publist/300Series/307100-1.pdf http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/publist/300Series/307100-1.... So 3 million lbs would be 9375 miles, or 15000km
  - asavadatti 12y ago
    15,000km makes more sense than 3 million lbs.
- rz2k 12y ago
  Thanks a lot for the distraction! Assuming that the wire has a diameter of 2.5mm, there are two strands, and shortening by 1/3 accounts for the loss due to the twist and accounts for the mass of the barbs. Probably something like 9,000 miles[1] Of many metrics, the length might not be that interesting. For instance how much land did that represent making safe for crops, and conversely how much territory was ruined for grazing? While there isn't demand for barbed wire for as a counterweight, it does add some context on the supply side. The 173 m^3 of steel is about 0.3% of the steel used to construct the Three Gorges Dam, and 20% of the steel used to construct the Eiffel Tower[2] [1] Wolfram|Alpha seems to change the syntax handling from month to month, but for now using weight/density of steel treats it like a physical object unlike "volume of steel" which returns market trading volumes. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%283e6+lbs+%2F+density+of+steel+alloy%29%2F%282*1.5*pi*1.25mm^2%29+in+miles http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%283e6+lbs+%2F+density+... [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=173+m^3 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=173+m^3
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Note: it's cool how two different back-of-the-napkin calculations gave a very similar result.
gagege 12y ago
Almost every time a 99% Invisible episode comes out, I can expect an article about the same thing pop up on HN a week later. Kinda funny.
geoffbrown2014 12y ago
They made a documentary about barbed wire and Glidden and the town where he manufactured it Dekalb, Illinois. Its called Barbed Wire Pioneers.
- rsuelzer 12y ago
  I briefly attended Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, this article brought back many "fond" memories of attending college in a corn field where barbed wire was a source of pride.
pimlottc 12y ago
Any particular reason this is being linked to slate.com instead of 99 Percent Invisible's own site? There does not appear to be any additional content and they are missing a correction update. http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devils-rope/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devils-rope/

73 points by curtis 12y ago

The conflict between cowboys and farmers is still going strong over 100 years later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff

agumonkey 12y ago
A conflict born from such a small technological change. Managing land is tricky.
jessaustin 12y ago
I would characterize that more as a freeloader deciding he wasn't being subsidized enough by the taxpayer, then declining to pay the tiny pittance the BLM levies for the privilege of overgrazing the deserts of the West. That he was able to hoodwink a bunch of city slickers eager to signal their "conservatism" by opposing the gub'ment no matter what, says more about them than about him.
darkarmani 12y ago
"Bundy has said he does not recognize and will not submit to federal police power over land that he believes belongs to the "sovereign state of Nevada."[28] He said: "I abide by all Nevada state laws. But I don't recognize the United States government as even existing."" That has nothing to do with cowboys and farmers and more to do with a being a massive trespasser and all around freeloader.

jsherry 12y ago

If you have a taste for stories that span the spectrum of airport carpeting fanboys to those with more historical significance such as the story here, I cannot recommend the 99% invisible podcast enough. Web - http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible http://feeds.99percentinvisible.org/99percentinvisible iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id394775318 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id394775318

wlesieutre 12y ago
To list a couple others off the top of my head: SF's public stairways, NYC's cow tunnels, sound design for televised sports, Plimsoll lines, elevator brakes, architecture for deaf people. I don't know if I'd call it a "spectrum" so much as a "crazy pile of everything design related." Great show.
digitalneal 12y ago
I was just going to mention this too. One of the best Podcasts out there IMO. Great "short" stories/history lessons.

GuiA 12y ago

This is one of the most interesting parts of the article to me: Right around the same time that barbed wire was invented, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. At first, telephone companies were laying telephone wire in cities, but they weren’t interested in the rural market. But farmers also needed phones, which meant that they needed a network of wires to connect the farms. Barbed wire fences could serve this purpose. The barbed wire couldn’t transmit a signal quite as clearly as a nice insulated copper wire, but for many years, it did the trick. A dozen or so farms might be connected on one system; for about $25, farmers could buy a kit to rig themselves into the network. In 1907 there were 18,000 independent telephone cooperatives serving nearly 1.5 million people. Because of this, farmers were some of the earliest adopters of telephone technology. A great reminder that technological advances don't happen in a vacuum, and new innovations spread best if they can work over already existing infrastructures.

steverb 12y ago
Around 1998 I was working for a small mom and pop computer/networking shop and had a customer successfully run Ethernet over barbed wire so he could network between his house (where the main computer was) and his barn. It was about a fifty foot run at 1Mbps. He did have issues when it rained, once the posts got wet enough to ground the wires.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  I knew rain affected wifi cantennas, now it messes with wired networking too.
  - vlunkr 12y ago
    Only if your wires are exposed
- na85 12y ago
  How on earth did he manage that? Didn't the barbs cause shorts where they touched the individual twisted metal strands?

relaytheurgency 12y ago

Glidden’s design took off, and by 1876, his company was producing nearly 3 million pounds of barbed wire annually. Sentences like this always bother me. Of what use is this information? Barbed wire isn't used as a counterweight. How much fence is 3 million pounds?

masklinn 12y ago
Basic barbed wire is ~80 lbs per quarter-mile roll (1,320 ft) according to http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/publist/300Series/307100-1.pdf http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/publist/300Series/307100-1.... So 3 million lbs would be 9375 miles, or 15000km
- asavadatti 12y ago
  15,000km makes more sense than 3 million lbs.
rz2k 12y ago
Thanks a lot for the distraction! Assuming that the wire has a diameter of 2.5mm, there are two strands, and shortening by 1/3 accounts for the loss due to the twist and accounts for the mass of the barbs. Probably something like 9,000 miles[1] Of many metrics, the length might not be that interesting. For instance how much land did that represent making safe for crops, and conversely how much territory was ruined for grazing? While there isn't demand for barbed wire for as a counterweight, it does add some context on the supply side. The 173 m^3 of steel is about 0.3% of the steel used to construct the Three Gorges Dam, and 20% of the steel used to construct the Eiffel Tower[2] [1] Wolfram|Alpha seems to change the syntax handling from month to month, but for now using weight/density of steel treats it like a physical object unlike "volume of steel" which returns market trading volumes. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%283e6+lbs+%2F+density+of+steel+alloy%29%2F%282*1.5*pi*1.25mm^2%29+in+miles http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%283e6+lbs+%2F+density+... [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=173+m^3 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=173+m^3
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Note: it's cool how two different back-of-the-napkin calculations gave a very similar result.

gagege 12y ago

Almost every time a 99% Invisible episode comes out, I can expect an article about the same thing pop up on HN a week later. Kinda funny.

geoffbrown2014 12y ago

They made a documentary about barbed wire and Glidden and the town where he manufactured it Dekalb, Illinois. Its called Barbed Wire Pioneers.

rsuelzer 12y ago
I briefly attended Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, this article brought back many "fond" memories of attending college in a corn field where barbed wire was a source of pride.

pimlottc 12y ago

Any particular reason this is being linked to slate.com instead of 99 Percent Invisible's own site? There does not appear to be any additional content and they are missing a correction update. http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devils-rope/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/devils-rope/